Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Iraqi Army Can't Be Westernized

If we cannot get the highlighted line imprinted in our brains or at least tattooed on the inside of our eyelids we will never be successful at working through and with indigenous or host nation forces. This is probably our single most problematic weakness with all the concepts of building partner capacity, train advise and assist, organize, train, equip, rebuild and advise, and yes even foreign internal defense. We have spent the last 14 years believing we could organize and train Afghans and Iraqis and others and yet we have not learned from history and we have tried so hard to create not only militaries in our image but also many other institutions. We have spent so much time coming up with new concepts with new names and variations on foreign internal defense that have NOT been built on the important history we should have learned long ago and instead we continue to conduct social experiments to try to create armies and governments in our image. Until we understand and accept the sentence below we will never be able to work effectively with host nation forces.

Can the Iraqis readjust their army to better reflect culture and clan in time for the next offensive? Can the United States commit to an air campaign to rival Desert Storm? Can we provide enough moral and technical support to make all this possible by the beginning of the next campaign season in April and May 2016? I don't know.But I do know that history has been harsh to those who try to build alien armies in their own image. All the American firepower and "boots on the ground" will be for naught unless we allow the Iraqis to fight their war their way.

The Iraqi Army Can't Be Westernized

Arabs fight best in formations organized around familiar groups sharing more than the same national flag.

Twenty-four years ago, in June 1991, as American troops began to gear up to invade Iraq, I started writing and researching my book "Certain Victory," the U.S. Army's official history of the Gulf War. I spent nine months reading documents and interviewing soldiers ranging from private to four-star general. I asked one question of everyone: How did the U.S. defeat the world's fourth-largest military in only 100 hours of combat?

The universal answers from the soldiers: We fought with superior equipment, bought by the taxpayers during the Reagan years; our leaders overcame the malaise of Vietnam to build a new volunteer military; the revolutions in training and doctrine of the 1980s proved their worth.

All true. But as I started to write, I knew something was missing. One afternoon at my office I convened a roundtable discussion with some of the most successful operational commanders against Saddam Hussein in Desert Storm. I asked the same question and got the same stock answers. But then one general and dear friend of mine paused for a moment, looked into the air pensively and said: "You know, Bob, Arab armies really can't do this very well. Remember we not only fought an Arab army, we fought with Arab armies, and the Saudis and Syrians weren't any better than Saddam's Republican Guard."

It was a politically incorrect moment to be sure. But after watching nearly a quarter-century of history pass, I must conclude he had a point. T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) certainly knew this to be true when he ignored orders from senior British Army officers to make his Saudi Bedouin brothers into a proper conventional force. The Israeli Defense Forces have racked up four wins and zero losses in wars against Arab armies that tried to fight them with Western methods and equipment. Our march to Baghdad in 2003 lasted only three weeks and crushed Iraq's conventional army.

The stark consistency of contemporary history tells us several things as we ponder why the Iraqi military is proving to be so inept in its war against Islamic State. First is the immutable tenet that wars are human endeavors and that culture counts. Arab culture is based on family, tribe and clan. Thus it should come as no surprise that Arabs fight best in formations that are organically grown and organized around familiar groups that share more than the same national flag.

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David S. Maxwell is a 30-year veteran of the US Army retiring as a Special
Forces Colonel with his final assignment serving on the military faculty
teaching national security at the National War College. He spent the majority
of his military service overseas with over twenty years in Asia, primarily in
Korea, Japan, and the Philippines leading organizations from the A-Team to the
Joint Special Operations Task Force level.

He
hails from Madison, Connecticut and is a 1980 graduate of Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio with a BA in Political Science and has Masters Degrees in Military
Arts and Science and National Security Studies from the U.S. Army Command and
General Staff College, the School of Advanced Military Studies, and the
National War College of the National Defense University. He received his
commission from the Officer Candidate School in 1981.

In addition, he is a fellow at the
Institute of Corean-American Studies (ICAS) and on the Board of Directors for the
Small Wars Journal, The International Council of Korean Studies (ICKS) and the
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK). He is a Life Member of the
Special Forces Association and the National War College Alumni
Association.

He is currently studying in the
Doctorate of Liberal Studies program at Georgetown University and teaches SEST
604: Unconventional Warfare and Special Operations for Policy Makers and
Strategists.

Welcome

The purpose of this site is to share information on national security issues with anyone who has an interest in these topics. My focus is on National Security Issues of Policy and Strategy; Asia, with particular emphasis on Korea and China, as well as Special Warfare (Unconventional Warfare and Foreign Internal Defense) and Surgical Strike (Counterterrorism) and how they relate to US National Security.

I am using a format similar to the email messages I send to about 1000 colleagues on my private email list serve that I have been managing since 1997. Each entry will include the title of the news article, the first few paragraphs and a link to the entire article. My comments will be in blue arial font and key excerpts/quotes from the article will be in the article's original format. As a good Soldier always strives to improve his fighting position, I will endeavor to improve this site.

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Thought for the Day

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." - Confucius